Abstract
In Living Stories (Capps 1997) I addressed the rather broad consensus among clergy and laity alike that gossip is destructive of congregational life, a consensus based on the view that gossip invariably involves negatively critical conversations about other individuals and groups. However, this view is not supported by social scientific research and literary studies on gossip, which present a more complex picture of this form of human communication. On the other hand, the claim that gossip is trivial is more difficult to challenge, so I made a case for the importance of the trivial through consideration of the formal similarities between gossip and the narratives that comprise the Gospels, including the fact that both employ an “esthetic of surfaces” that focuses on specific personal particulars and that the stories that are told derive their power from the freedom that the participants in the conversation gain from entering imaginatively into the life of other persons. The present article furthers the exploration of the affinities between gossip and Gospel narratives by noting the role of humor in fostering good gossip and the mutually supportive role of gossip and humor in the art of becoming an intimate of Jesus.
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Notes
The third meaning of the gossip as “one who runs about tattling like women at a lying-in” appears to associate gossiping with disclosing the identity of the father of a baby born out of wedlock. In A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony John Demos (1970) points out that midwives were expected by the town authorities to get a woman to reveal the father’s identity during the birth process—”when delivery was actually in progress and the girl’s powers of resistance were presumed to be at their lowest ebb” (p. 152). Such information would be used to punish the father and to make him financially responsible for his child’s maintenance. The midwife, then, became a “tattler,” an “informer,” a role that served the interests of the community if not the biological father of the newborn.
For example, in his book on jokes (1960) Freud cites Mark Twain’s account of how his brother was at one time employed on a great road-making enterprise. The premature explosion of a mine blew him up into the air and he came down again far away from the place where he had been working. Freud notes that our feelings of sympathy for the victim vanish when Twain goes on to say that his brother had a half-day’s wages deducted for being “absent from his place of employment” (p. 286). Twain may have had a brother who worked on a great road-making enterprise but even if this was the case, we have no reason to believe that the rest of the story is true. In fact, if it were, it would cease to be funny.
In “Gossip: The Grace Notes of Congregational Life” Carol Schweitzer (2008), a congregational pastor for fifteen years prior to becoming a seminary professor, emphasizes the liberating effect of a sense of humor—and a spirit of non-defensiveness—when the pastor becomes the object of gossip.
I report in this chapter on an empirical study that I conducted in one of my classes. I presented them with a joke (one that concerned the crucifixion of Jesus) and then asked them to indicate whether they considered it offensive or inoffensive and funny or unfunny. 75% of the students found it offensive and 25% felt it was inoffensive. 60% of those who found it offensive also felt it was not at all funny, while the remaining 40% considered it funny at least to some degree. Among the 25% who did not consider it offensive, all considered it funny at least to some degree. The fact that 40% of those who found it offensive also thought it was funny makes Cohen’s point that one can view a joke as offensive and yet not have to declare that it is also unfunny.
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Capps, D. Gossip, Humor, and the Art of Becoming an Intimate of Jesus. J Relig Health 51, 99–117 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-010-9382-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-010-9382-3